The Cat Princess
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Written for sakuuya's Fairy Tale Contest. Much to his dismay, a straitlaced young prince finds himself engaged to marry a talking cat. Can she earn his love, or will he go against tradition to break the engagement?


The Cat Princess

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Tokyo Mew Mew

Copyright: Reiko Yoshida, Mia Ikumi

_Author's Note: This fanfiction is inspired by two stories. The first is a Russian fairy tale called "The Frog Queen", in which a woman cursed into the shape of a small animal must earn her husband's and in-laws' respect by winning three domestic challenges. The second is "Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady", a King Arthur legend, in which a man must choose whether his shapeshifting wife should be beautiful by day and ugly by night, or vice versa. _

_In accordance to sakuuya's contest rules, I have used only Tokyo Mew Mew characters. Masazou is Masaya's lookalike from episode 8._

The royal house of Aoyama was known for three things: a love of challenges, a powerful sense of tradition, and the Aoyama Arrows: an enchanted set of arrows rumored to have been given to the first king by Cupid himself. Whenever a son of the house came of age, he would shoot an arrow outside the palace gates, and inevitably, without so much as grazing a passerby, it would land on the ground and be picked up by the prince's destined mate. However, on the day that Prince Masaya, third son of King Keiichiro, tracked his own arrow, the last thing he expected was to find it under the paw of a small black cat.

"May I have that back, please?" he asked, trying to conceal his dismay.

"I'm sorry, but no," said the cat. "I've heard about you and these arrows, Your Highness. I hate to trap you into this, but … you have no idea how badly I need this chance."

"Tradition or no tradition, I can't marry a cat!"

"You don't have to. If you can't accept me on the day of the wedding, I promise I'll go away. But until then, please, give me a chance."

Feeling sorry for her and bound to uphold the tradition, Masaya picked her up in his arms, placed the arrow back in his quiver, and carried her to the palace gardens from which he had been shooting.

His older brothers, Ryou and Masazou, had already arrived with their brides, two pretty and well-bred young women named Lady Miwa and Lady Moe. As soon as the cat introduced herself, just a shade too cheerfully – "Hello, everyone! I'm Lady Ichigo, delighted to meet you!" – all four of them began to laugh, the ladies behind gloved hands, the princes slapping Masaya on the back.

"Congratulations, little brother! Gorgeous, isn't she? At least you'll never have a problem catching mice!"

"I'd rather catch mice than flies," Ichigo retorted, baring her fangs at Ryou. "Close your mouth before _you_ do."

Masaya had to smile. He hadn't expected the cat to be so spirited.

"Boys, please," said King Keiichiro, in a soft but commanding voice that silenced them all. "Leave your brother and his lady alone. You should not judge people by their appearances, but by their actions. And to that purpose, dear ladies, I announce your first engagement challenge, the challenge of problem-solving: which of you can unravel these by sunrise tomorrow?"

He took three balls of yarn out of his game bag, so intricately knotted and tangled that Miwa and Moe gasped at the sight of them. Masaya accepted Ichigo's yarn ball for her and carried it to his room, with her following silently at his feet.

As soon as they were alone with the door closed, he sat down on his foreposter bed and buried his head in his hands.

"This is not going to work, Ichigo. How are you supposed to untangle that thing with a cat's claws? They'll never let me hear the end of this."

"Don't worry, Prince," she purred. "I'm not as fluffy-headed as I look."

That night, while he slept, the little cat stepped into a square of moonlight from the window and transformed into a young human woman. Frowning, muttering, shaking her head over the stubborn knots, she worked on the yarn ball for hours by the light of the candle on Masaya's nightstand. By the time she was finished, the yarn not only untangled but rolled up in a smooth, even ball, she could barely keep her eyes open. The moment the moonlight faded from the room, the yarn dropped out of her shrinking hands. The next morning, Masaya was woken up by the same little black cat from the day before.

"Ichigo, that's amazing!" he said, holding up her finished work. "How did you do that?"

She only ducked her head, pleased and embarrassed to the tips of her whiskers.

"Excellent, my dear," the King declared later that day, seeing that Ichigo's yarn was the only one finished. "I'm sure your fiançé must be very proud. Aren't you, son?"

Masaya nodded.

"Your second test will be a challenge of creativity: who can make me the most beautiful iced cake by tea-time tomorrow?"

"The yarn was one thing," Masaya confided to his feline bride as they left the King's throne room, "But how are you supposed to _bake_?"

Ichigo giggled. "You worry too much, Prince. You need to relax. Trust me."

That night, Miwa and Moe – wanting to impress their future husbands and father-in-law, and not to be outdone by a cat again – decided to spy on Ichigo as she entered the empty kitchens late that night. They were astonished to see the cat transform into a woman, but not so astonished as when the woman left her cake in the oven for five whole hours. Watching from outside the window, they laughed silently as Ichigo threw a tantrum over the burned cake.

"She may be a sorceress, but a baker she's definitely not," commented Miwa, and Moe agreed.

However, as soon as Ichigo's sharp, still-feline senses informed her that they were gone – she'd been aware of the spying all along – she dropped the spoiled persona she had been using, assembled her ingredients for a second time, and made a sweet, moist, masterpiece of a cake that would have done honor to the King's own personal chef. She iced the top of it with a portrait of his own palace, white sugar against dark chocolate, complete down to every turret. She placed it on a covered dish, carried it back to Masaya's room, and waited for the transformation to take over. That morning, he was woken up by her resounding purr on the pillow next to him, and by the most delicious baking smell he had ever encountered.

"You tell me to trust you, Ichigo," he said. "But I wish you would trust _me_. Please, tell me how you're doing this."

"Someday, my prince. I promise."

King Keiichiro was delighted with the cake. He cut it with his own hand and the entire family ate together, laughing and talking, Ichigo sitting between the king and her fiançé on a stack of velvet cushions. Miwa and Moe, who had ordered their servants to bake theirs and had ended up with only mediocre offerings, were mortified, but did their best not to let it show and made a point of being polite to their future sister-in-law.

"We shouldn't have been spying on her," they whispered to each other. "Serves us right."

"Your third challenge," said the King at the end of the meal, "Should be easy. It's a challenge of diplomacy – in other words, a dance. If you three gentlemen and your lovely ladies can get through the night without stepping on someone's toes, we'll have a triple wedding the next day! How about that?"

"Fine by me," said Ryou, smiling crookedly. "But don't you think we've got an unfair advantage?"

"After all," added Masazou, with a skeptical look at Ichigo, who needed so many cushions just to see above the table. "_Our_ brides can dance."

Miwa and Moe exchanged a rueful look. They knew better than to underestimate a cat.

"Wait and see, Your Highnesses," Ichigo declared, sitting tall and straight as any human lady. "Wait and see."

/

On the night of the ball, the entire castle was lit up with candles like a Christmas tree, shedding a golden light on the sparkle of countless jewels and the shimmer of silk. The King was in his element, charming the ladies and impressing the gentlemen, standing at the center of a cheerful crowd with a champagne glass in his hand. Ryou and Masazou were dancing with their brides for propriety's sake, each privately plotting ways to escape, as neither of them were the most sociable people. Masaya, however, who normally would have been at his father's side, supporting the conversation with a few well placed remarks, was hovering by the staircase instead, checking his pocket watch. Ichigo was three hours late, and he had no idea why.

"Where's your kitty-cat?" Ryou teased, stopping next to him between dances. "Did she take too long licking her paws?"

"Oh, be quiet!"

"No need to take it personally, brother. You know I'm only joking. You do realize I have no problem with her, don't you? I like her. It's not every girl who can get a smile out of a stick-in-the-mud like you."

Masaya looked up at him, surprised and not a little touched. But before he could answer, they were interrupted by the resonant voice of the chamberlain, announcing the Lady Ichigo.

At the top of the staircase stood the most striking young woman Masaya had ever seen.

She had eyes the color of melting chocolate and hair as red as strawberries, falling in soft ringlets past her shoulders. Her pink gown, instead of clashing with her hair, blended with it perfectly. She descended the long, curved staircase with one hand on the railing, her head high, with the dignity of one born to be a princess …

… and tripped over her dress as soon as she reached the bottom, landing in Masaya's arms. Ryou, watching them, covered a smirk behind his hand.

"Drat!" She blushed. "I'm so sorry. Formal clothes and shapeshifting don't go well together."

"Let's pass it off as a hug. We _are_ engaged, after all." He held out his hand with a small, playful bow. "May I have this dance, my lady?"

"Of course!"

Under cover of the music, guiding her closely to prevent further accidents, he took advantage of the situation to ask the questions burning in his mind. The more he saw of her, the more he liked her, the more the mysteries surrounding her were driving him mad.

"Who _are_ you, Ichigo?"

She sighed and shook her head, looking older than age with the pain and resignation in her eyes.

"Believe me, my prince. If I could explain to you, I would, but I'm not allowed. All I can tell you is that I'm under a spell, and it prevents me from telling you anything about my past. Is it really so important for you to know everything?"

In that moment, Masaya's heart and mind were in accord, showing him what he must do. The choice, he had been hesitating to make ever since their first meeting, was simple. He led her into one of the curtained alcoves in the corners of the room, drew the curtains closed for privacy, and took both her hands in his.

"Yes," he said. "I do need to know … because I care for you. You told me when we met that, in spite of the arrow, the decision to marry would be ours. Well, I've made my decision. Ichigo, will you marry me?"

"Masaya … " Her eyes shone with tears, but she was smiling. "Thank you! You've made me so happy, I can't believe it … but before I tell you my answer, can I ask _you_ a question?"

"Anything."

"If you could choose, how would you rather have me: as a cat by night and a woman by day, or the other way around?"

Masaya paused to think for a long moment, sensing that her question was related to the spell she had mentioned. The answer he gave might change both their lives.

His first impulse was to choose her as a woman in the daytime, so that no one would ever make fun of them again, but seeing the anxiety in her wide eyes as she waited for him to speak, he realized how selfish that would be. He tried to imagine how she must feel, shapeshifting between two such different bodies, all without her own consent. Enduring his brothers' derision, working hard to overcome every one of his father's challenges, on the faint chance that Masaya was the one to break her spell.

He could not take away any more of her free will.

"I would love you either way," he told her. "The choice is yours."

A blinding red light in the alcove made him stumble back and close his eyes. He smelled lightning and heard an ear-splitting roll of thunder. _Nice going, kitten_, he might have heard a voice hiss above the noise. _And you, Prince, had better be good to her … or else._

By the time Masaya's disorientation faded enough to recognize reality, Ichigo was beaming at him with pure, ecstatic joy.

"You did it!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him. "You broke the spell! I'm human again – _all_ human, all the time!"

"What in heaven's name just happened?"

"That was Kish." She rolled her eyes. "Always so dramatic. He's a sorcerer who wanted me as his mistress. I said no, and that spell was his revenge. It could only be broken by finding someone who accepted me the way I was. I could never decide if he was just being cruel, or if this was his roundabout way of making sure my choice of a man would be the right one." She grinned. "But since he led me to _you_, I think I can forgive him."

"A sorcerer, is he? I had no idea you had such a colorful history, Ichigo."

"Problem?"

"No." He touched one of her scarlet curls. "Informed sources tell me I'm something of a stick-in-the-mud. A bit of color is exactly what I need."


End file.
